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2022 in Review: October – December
TechInformed recaps some of the biggest news of 2022, continuing with Q4 (October to December)
Top Article: KFC's "finger lickin' good" data warehouse strategy
India saw the launch of its first 5G mobile networks. The live switch-on of 5G was announced collectively by India's telecoms sector alongside the Indian government as part of the India Mobile Congress event held in New Delhi.
India's two largest telecoms operators, Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, said services had gone live in select cities.
Airtel confirmed it had rolled out 5G services in eight Indian cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Nagpur and Siliguri – at the start of October. The firm said it plans to have all of "urban India" covered by its 5G services by the end of 2023.
"Bharti Airtel will today start 5G services in eight cities of India. The telecom operator will cover the entire country by 2024," said Bharti Airtel's chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal in a PTI report.
Demand for workers with AI skills has more than tripled in the UK over the last decade, a study found.
According to a report by market analytics Lightcast, the growth is measured by the number of job listings that require AI skillsets, which has increased from approximately 0.3% in 2012 to around 1% of all UK job adverts in 2021 – and the report shows that demand continued to grow in the first quarter of this year too.
"We're seeing a rapid growth rate for AI skills in the UK labour market," said Andy Durman, Lightcast's executive vice president of global business.
Former Uber CSO Joseph Sullivan was found guilty of failing to report a 2016 cyber security incident to the relevant authorities.
A jury in San Francisco found Sulliba – Uber's former chief security officer – guilty on two counts, obstruction of justice and deliberate concealment of a felony, in failing to report the 2016 cyber security breach, a spokesperson from the Department of Justice has confirmed.
"Sullivan affirmatively worked to hide the data breach from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and took steps to prevent the hackers from being caught," said Stephanie Hinds, US Attorney for the Northern District of California.
The case is in relation to a breach of Uber's systems that involved the data of 57 million passengers and drivers. Uber did not disclose the incident for a year.
Elon Musk finally sealed his $46 billion takeover of Twitter and immediately set about an overhaul of the social media giant's management and code.
The Tesla boss completed the deal by memorably walking into Twitter HQ carrying a kitchen sink, saying "let that sink in", and switching his own Twitter profile bio to "Chief Tweep".
Completion of the deal came after months of back and forth, including a potential legal case, and Musk immediately set about upending Twitter's practices, including firing the majority of the company's senior staff, and asking others to produce code so that it could be analysed by his own workers.
Musk had long been a critic of Twitter, claiming the platform had been too heavy handed with blocks, bans and the removal of content. A self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, Musk said he would allow Twitter to function more openly.
Editor's Pick: How robots are set to move into every facet of our working lives
Whenever I would think of "the future" as a kid, I'd imagine two technological innovations that seemed completely out there, but also encapsulated the opportunities on offer: Space travel, and robots.
While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have begun taking passengers within touching distance of space, real voyages to seek out new life and new civilisations a la Star Trek are still lightyears away. But robots are already making a splash in many industries.
But instead of near-perfect automotons from iRobot or the life-life androids of WestWorld, the modern-day robot is designed to work alongside, move amongst, and be worn by human workers.
As part of our Robotics Themed Week, we looked at how robots are set to transform our working lives.
Top Article: NatWest's Arun Mehta: How to make your data superb
Embattled gigafactory startup Britishvolt — which is building what is set to be the UK's largest battery manufacturing facility — faced fresh woes after the UK government withdrew funding, leading the company to seek out funding opportunities.
After the UK government withdrew, the firm's only secured creditor has appointed receivers over part of its assets, the company confirmed to Sifted. It's a sign that the creditor, investment group Katch Fund Solutions, is looking to secure its position should Britishvolt fail to raise enough funding to avoid administration.
Katch Fund Solutions appointed receivers — brought in to protect a creditors' position — to the assets of Power by Britishvolt Properties, a subsidiary of Britishvolt, on November 3. Katch has a minority debt interest in the gigafactory site owned by Britishvolt.
Facebook-parent Meta announced plans to let go of 13% of its staff – a decision which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg blamed on online growth during the pandemic and its subsequent decline.
The boom in e-commerce during Covid, which led to Meta "significantly increase its investments" has not played out the way Zuckerberg had hoped, he said in a statement to staff, posted on Meta's site. "I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that," he said.
The Facebook founder added that the macroeconomic downturn and increased competition [from newer social media players such as TikTok which have emerged to capture a younger audience] were other factors that have contributed to his decision to lay off 11,000 employees.
The statement added that resources would now be focussed on a smaller number of "high priority growth areas" including the firm's AI discovery engine that's powering Instagram's Reels, other recommendation experiences, its ads and its business messaging platforms.
It was part of a wider job cuts trend across the tech industry.
With the festive season nearing, a report claimed three quarters of consumers said they prefer a hybrid shopping experience that marries in-store visits with the ability to buy online.
The survey from Sinch comprised of nearly 3,00 customers, also noted the importance of an additional level of automation with 92% of shoppers suggesting they would message a chatbot to see if a product is in-stock before visiting the store.
Jonathan Bean, chief marketing officer at Sinch, said that adding "rich messaging, chatbots or other conversational technologies" into the mix will allow retailers to support shoppers in how and where they want to engage.
Yet when it comes to messaging retailers for product returns, exchanges and refunds, over half of customers (53%) said they feel frustrated.
Google agreed to pay a $391.5 million settlement following accusations that the search engine giant illegally tracked users' locations in 40 US states, the Michigan attorney general's office said on Monday.
The settlement also requires Google to be more transparent with consumers about when it's using location tracking, and provide users with detailed information about location-tracking data on a special web page, the Iowa attorney general's office said.
"When consumers make the decision to not share location data on their devices, they should be able to trust that a company will no longer track their every move," Tom Miller, an Iowa Attorney General, said in a statement.
"This settlement makes it clear that companies must be transparent in how they track customers and abide by state and federal privacy laws."
Editor's Pick: Vegas bets big on smart city future
As local governments try to tackle rising populations, increasing energy and connectivity needs, and climate change commitments, making cities smarter seems to be a key solution.
For Las Vegas, that means the deployment of a large private 5G network which will help boost connectivity for residents, businesses and tourists, operating alongside a new transportation system backed by Elon Musk.
Sin City's mayor Carolyn Goodman outlined plans to turn Vegas into a model smart city by deploying thousands of sensors, supported by AI and machine learning, that will "improve the quality of the lives of our residents, our visitors and even those beyond our borders" she told the MWC Americas conference.
Working with NTT to launch a city-wide 5G network to underpin this is seen as a vital cog in the development of the "new" Vegas, the city's CIO Michael Sherwood told TI.
"Connectivity is the foundation for a lot of things in government and technology business that are required," he explains. "We always talk about fibre infrastructure, talking about the hard assets. But that last mile, that wireless capability, where we're able to help students connect to their school, we're able to secure and work with safety."
Seeing a famous tourist hub like Vegas gamble on a smart city future really excites me, after spending the last few years writing about the future of IoT.
Top Article: How Telehouse Europe is keeping its cool
French telecoms firm Orange has unveiled plans to help mitigate the energy crisis by reducing its energy consumption across Europe over the coming months.
The telco giant revealed three key areas of focus for its latest green plans: energy efficiency in networks, sourcing green energy, and reducing the impact of offices and retail.
Orange said it is already working to optimise energy consumption in some of its European markets, such as Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.
In Belgium, Poland and Spain, for example, the launch of mobile network sharing agreements are bringing energy savings to all partners by avoiding duplication and reducing maintenance costs.
Swedish fintech company Klarna partnered with tech start-up Vaayu to produce a carbon emissions tracker that allows customers to track a fashion product's CO2 emissions along different stages of its lifecycle.
Not only will shoppers have more accurate insights on the environmental impact of purchasing a product, they will also make more sensitive shopping decisions, the partners claimed.
Klarna's CO2e tracker has the ability to automatically calculate emissions for fashion purchases on a product-level in real-time. Its "cradle-to-grave" life cycle assessment (LCA) covers stages from raw material extraction and processing to product assembly and delivery to the end-user.
The Co-op joined forces with robotic start-up Starship Technologies and Leeds City Council to provide an autonomous delivery service to the streets of Leeds.
The fleet is powered by renewable electricity, with the average delivery for a robot consuming as little energy as boiling a kettle to make one cup of tea.
According to Co-op, customers can select groceries through the Starship food delivery app, schedule their delivery, and drop a pin to where they want their items to be sent.
Shoppers will be able to keep an eye on the bots journey in real-time via an interactive map and receive an alert on arrival which will signal them to meet and unlock the bot through the app.
EV fleets in companies are still a long way from replacing the company car or van and will require a mindset change according to an expert panel at London's EV Show last month.
At a consumer level electric vehicles offer a tax efficient way of getting around, acknowledged Wex VP of international technology, Alexandre Page-Relo, but from an enterprise perspective take-up may take a little longer.
Fellow panel member John Lowes, a senior technical advisor at High Voltage Systems and Services, predicted that a complete shift to electric fleets in industry would take "around eight-ish years".
According to Coleen Highfield, senior director for HR at Wex – a financial technology service provider which is investing in EV charging points – there's an entire change management system that needs to take place, particularly in upskilling the workforce.
Drivers need to learn how to charge their vehicles not only from their homes but also at their work place and other destinations – something the senior director (also the new owner of an electric Mini) has had to grapple with herself.
Most US public firms plan to invest in ESG reporting tools. That's according to a new survey from Deloitte that found that 99% of large US based public firms expect to invest in ESG reporting tools in the next 12 months.
Deloitte's 2022 Sustainability Action Report interviewed 300 senior finance, accounting, sustainability and legal executives working at publicly owned companies with revenues greater than $500 million.
Sectors represented include consumer products, financial services, life sciences and health care, oil and gas and technology, media and telecommunications.
The survey also found that well over half (57%) of companies have already implemented a cross-functional working group tasked with driving strategic attention to ESG, with nearly all others (42%) planning to follow suit, compared to the earlier survey findings with only 21% having implemented such a working group.
Editor's Pick: UN interview – Sustainable thinking
Climate change has been high up the news agenda in recent years, and at TechInformed, we have aimed to make it a central part of our reporting. Throughout 2022 we've looked at how businesses across the globe have launched new, greener policies or plans, all part of the global aim to hit net zero.
That's why we finished the year with our final Themed Week focussing in on GreenTech for enterprises. We had loads of fantastic case studies as well as deeper dives into some of the issues enterprises are facing as the overhaul legacy systems with more sustainable alternatives.
But the standout for me was an interview we carried out with the United Nations' Environmental Programme digital co-lead Shivam Kishore, who caught up with the TI team at Web Summit in Lisbon.
According to Kishore, countries and corporations both need to discover first what carbon emissions they are emitting before jumping towards ways to become net zero.
Then, "we need to start thinking about how to deploy the right kinds of technologies to mitigate the problems that we have", he explained.
It was a fascinating chance to see what the world's largest inter-governmental body was doing to help enterprises take on the challenge of global climate change.
James Pearce
CES2023 perspectives: The delivery bots picking up where Amazon and DHL dropped off
How data centres are balancing growth with sustainability
CES2023: Meet the robots making the leap from stage to workplace
2022 in Review: April – June
2022 in Review: July – September


The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve sets a target interest rate that depository institutions (banks) charge one another to borrow funds overnight. This interest rate in turn determines the interest rates that businesses and consumers face when borrowing money – for example, to buy a car or a house. All else held constant raising the target interest rate slows job growth and lowering the rate increases job growth. The current Federal Funds target rate is between zero and 0.25%. By historical standards this target is low and reflects the judgement of a majority of the Open Market Committee until now that inflation is low and the economy is below full employment and thus requires support to boost employment growth.
The FOMC is currently considering whether to raise its target for the federal funds rate. The labor market in Pennsylvania as we have demonstrated remains well below full employment. Inflation also remains substantially below normal with consumer prices in Pennsylvania rising just 1.3% in 2014, a figure less than half the average rate of inflation in the in the last 35 years and also below the Fed's inflation rate target of 2%. Although inflation is low, the substantial excess capacity in the labor market has made the rate of growth in wages even slower. To raise the Federal Funds target interest rate now would dampen job growth and in turn slow the growth in wages for most workers. Keeping the federal funds target low is the course of action most likely to lead to real wage gains for the majority of Pennsylvania workers.
In his inaugural address, Gov. Wolf made "jobs that pay" one of three priorities for his administration (the others being "schools that teach" and "government that works"). To advance that goal, the administration should develop a comprehensive Action Plan that spells out a combination of achievable executive and legislative steps that would achieve more jobs that pay and lift the wages and incomes for the Pennsylvania 99 percent by 10 percent by the year 2018. At one level, this Action Plan would be similar in spirit to U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force, with an added emphasis on ensuring that the analysis of ways to strengthen the middle class translate into concrete actions that move the needle on wages.
The Jobs That Pay Action Plan should include the implementation of strategic, industry-specific enforcement of labor standards. Traditionally, enforcement of labor standards in the United has been complaint driven (i.e., reactive) and fragmented, with enforcement of each labor standard (wage law, overtime, health and safety, prevailing wage, etc.) done by separate agencies and with little or no communication or coordination across agencies. The Obama Administration and a growing number of states, however, have increasingly shifted to pro-active enforcement of labor standards in specific industries in which violations concentrate. They have also begun to increase communication and coordination between federal and state government – including through data sharing agreements – and across agencies within states. Pennsylvania is behind the curve on these innovations and it should be a best-practice state.
The Jobs That Pay Action Plan should also consider a wide range of other actions. For example, in discussions about raising local minimum wages some observers express concerns about the ability of small businesses to adapt. As long as it is not pre-empted by the state legislature, the state could partner with philanthropy (e.g., in Pittsburgh or Philadelphia) to increase the local minimum wage coupled with delivery of a program of technical assistance to help small employers reorganize to improve efficiency so that they can afford to pay higher wages. A third area for examination should be the "wage boards," such as the fast food wage board that lifted the wage for fast food workers to $15 per hour in New York state. Are wage boards a policy innovation that could be applied in Pennsylvania, both in sectors such as fast food where the state is not a funder and in sectors such as long-term care, health care more broadly, and child care, where it is?
Across the board, a comprehensive Jobs That Pay Action Plan would not just improve jobs. It would also improve economic performance – productivity, quality, service, and innovation. The reason is simple: in every sector, there are variations in competitive – or "business" – strategy. Some companies compete by combining sophisticated technology, smart operating practices, and committed, experienced workers who have "good jobs" (which pay higher wages and benefits than typical for the industry). Other companies rely much more heavily on paying workers low wages and benefits. High labor standards and effective enforcement plus technical assistance and smart public investment in training can shift more companies toward good jobs strategies.
Our message to Pennsylvania policymakers this Labor Day is two-fold: first, "do no harm" – enact a sustainable state budget NOW that reinvests in education, communities, and jobs, and avoids a repeat of the economy-sapping austerity budget of 2011.
 Figures based on the Consumer Price Index - All Urban Consumers in the Philadelphia-Wilmington-Atlantic City, PA-NJ-DE-MD metropolitan area.
 On the particular importance of keeping interest rates low to African-American and minority workers, whose unemployment rates are much higher than white workers, and employment-to-population ratios much lower, see Connie M. Razza, Wall Street, Main Street, and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI), March 2015, online at http://goo.gl/m18Hn9. CPD, EPI, Action United Philadelphia, KRC and a variety of other national and state groups are partners on the "Fed Up" campaign which aims to shift Fed priorities toward a stronger focus on job creation and raising wages.
 For compelling examples of "good job strategies" in retail, see Zeynep Ton, The Good Jobs Strategy, New Harvest, 2014.


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Journal at a Glance
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2011): Problems of Cryobiology /
Cryomedicine, Clinical and Experimental Transplantology
Correction of Metabolic Impairments with "Cryocell-Hemocord" Cord Blood Preparation During Acute Purulent Peritonitis
K. A. Goltsev Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkov
S. Ye. Ovsyannikov Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkov
O. Yu. Kozhina Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkov
M. V. Ostankov Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkov
A. N. Goltsev Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kharkov
"Cryocell-hemocord" preparation, acute purulent peritonitis, correction of metabolic impairments, hypoxia
The method of correction of metabolic impairments with "Cryocell-Hemocord" cord blood preparation in experimental model in rats with an acute purulent peritonitis was tested. It has been shown that its application with antibiotics as a combined treatment of this pathology contributed to the correction of impairments of free radical oxidation, lessening of hypoxia rate, improvement of oxygen utilization by the tissues, survived hypoxia, recovery of antioxidant protection systems.
PDF (RU+EN)
Goltsev, K. A., Ovsyannikov, S. Y., Kozhina, O. Y., Ostankov, M. V., & Goltsev, A. N. (2011). Correction of Metabolic Impairments with "Cryocell-Hemocord" Cord Blood Preparation During Acute Purulent Peritonitis. Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine, 21(1), 96–103. Retrieved from https://cryo.org.ua/journal/index.php/probl-cryobiol-cryomed/article/view/159
Vol. 21 No. 1 (2011): Problems of Cryobiology
Copyright (c) 2020 K. A. Goltsev, S. Ye. Ovsyannikov, O. Yu. Kozhina, M. V. Ostankov, A. N. Goltsev
Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine
23, Pereyaslavskaya str., Kharkiv, Ukraine
Tel. +38057 373 4143; Fax +38057 373 5952
e-mail: journal@cryo.org.ua

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


AYR UNITED Football Club has been awarded planning permission to build its new stadium.
The facility, to be developed at Heathfield, will mean fans can enjoy a 7,650 capacity stadium on the northern part of the site.
The Ayr United Stadium, Sports and Business Campus will also include indoor training and parking facilities. While these will be built within the southern stand, the north and west stands will contain 8,775 square metres of rentable office accommodation.
The commercial office space is expected to provide the club with the finances to complete the construction and ensure the club's long-term future.
The project will also include 106 residential units comprising 54 flats and a mix of 52 semi-detached and terraced houses. At the same time, South Ayrshire Council approved the redevelopment of the club's Somerset Park ground to create 155 flats.
Councillor Nan McFarlane, Chair of South Ayrshire Council's Regulatory Panel said: "I welcome the development of a new football stadium for Ayr United, offices and parking. Importantly the development includes the construction of two residential housing developments that will have 24.9% of socially affordable housing within it. A higher level of socially affordable housing would have been welcome, but this percentage will have a very positive impact on the demand for housing in the area. This is particularly important as South Ayrshire is a pressurised area for housing and this will help to provide additional homes for people.
The development has taken a long while to come to fruition with the applicant and Officers from the Council's Planning section working together to ensure that the stadium and housing are fit for purpose and suitable for their location.
Ayr United Football & Athletic Club Limited Lachlan Cameron, managing director said, "This morning the Club and our supporters took a major step forward to realising modern purpose built 21st century facilities at our new home at Heathfield.
"It became apparent to everyone at the meeting this morning the amount of detailed work and submissions that have been undertaken by our Development Consultants and Project Managers, Rockwood as well as various consultants engaged by Barratt West of Scotland. Indeed it was extremely pleasing that the Councillors at this mornings meeting commended the hard work of the Planning Officers as well as that of the Applicants and in particular made reference to the careful design of the affordable housing to ensure that it is fully integrated into the proposed housing developments.


Microsoft Corp. Thursday night issued a fix to patch a new vulnerability that could give an attacker user-level privileges on Windows 2000 systems running its Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service.
SMTP is installed by default along with IIS 5.0 on Windows 2000 Server systems. SMTP can be installed on Windows 2000 Professional systems, as well.
Several recent Windows 2000-related exploits have been characterized by scenarios in which an attacker could gain system- or administrative-level access to a compromised system, which effectively handed her complete control of a server. In last night's security bulletin, Microsoft stressed that while the new vulnerability can give attackers user-level privileges on the exploited SMTP service itself, the overall security of a Windows 2000 system is not compromised.
But according to Edward Ko, a network coordinator with the Pennsylvania State University, an attacker who successfully exploits an SMTP-related vulnerability of this kind isn't primarily interested in gaining administrative control over a system.
"If you have user-level [privileges] on the SMTP service, you've got carte blanche to send as much spam as you want," he says. "This is just the thing that spammers or bulk mailers are always looking for.
Microsoft's security bulletin indicates that the new vulnerability is enabled by virtue of a flaw in the SMTP service's authentication process that could allow an unauthorized user to successfully authenticate – even with improper credentials. Microsoft did not disclose how such an attack could be perpetrated.
The software giant also claims that Exchange 5.5 or Exchange 2000 Servers running on Windows 2000 are unaffected by the latest vulnerability. For the record, Microsoft's own security hardening guidelines recommend against installing the SMTP service unless it's required.
As has been the case with quite a few Windows 2000-related security issues, this latest vulnerability affects a software component that is installed by default with the operating system itself. In the past, some IT organizations were placed at risk because they'd deployed Windows 2000 with its default options enabled and consequently weren't aware that vulnerable components or services were running in their environments. But as PSU's Ko points out, IT organizations that unintentionally installed the SMTP service when they accepted Windows 2000's default installation options have actually been at risk all along.
"This is something that a lot of people always missed when they just accepted the default options whenever they configured their servers," Ko says. "If you just check the 'Internet Information Services' box when you're installing Windows 2000, it installs [SMTP] by default. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who just accept the default options, which explains why we have so many open SMTP relays on NT 4.0 and Windows 2000 servers."
As a result, Ko says, the only users who are truly affected by this vulnerability are those who've actually made the effort to secure their SMTP services against relaying in the first place.
Microsoft's security bulletin says that Windows 2000 systems running its SMTP service should be safe if they're located behind a firewall. For his part, a systems administrator with a large telecommunications company believes that it's simply not a good idea to deploy the Microsoft SMTP service on Windows 2000 systems with direct access to the Internet – period.


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Ohio ranked No. 1 in nation for transparency in government spending
From The Columbus Dispatch After trailing other states, Ohio is now at the top of the list for transparency in government spending.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group announced today that Ohio jumped to No. 1 after being ranked 46th last year.
Ohio received a perfect score of 100 — the highest score the group has ever awarded. Ohio's jump to the top was the largest single improvement since the group started the ranking six years ago.
The top ranking comes after Treasurer Josh Mandel's office unveiled OhioCheckbook.com, which tracks spending by all government agencies in the state, in December.
Mandel said the reason his office launched the site was so Ohio could "be leader, not a basement dweller."
"My ultimate goal here is to help set off a national race for transparency," Mandel said.
The website has about 112 million transactions going back to fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2014. The treasurer's office plans to eventually update the site monthly, but isn't ready to do that yet.
Newer PostAttorney: South Range Board of Education violated state Sunshine Laws
Older PostDennis Hetzel commentary: Ohio's public-records law is a real mess


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🕹🎮 Britt's Personal Top 20 Video Games 🕹🎮 @BrittRecluseuk #RetroGaming #IndieGames
I find any list of this type to be very fluid, listing the top twenty games of all time objectively would be impossible.
What I've done here is to list the games that had the biggest impact on me across a broad spectrum of genres as possible and always come to mind during these types of conversations.
I actually wrote out this list a couple of weeks ago and then returned to it later to see if it still felt 'right' and it did, so I stuck with it.
Next month, who knows? It could be a different story.
The first turn-based game I ever played and one that still stands up today. A story that seems generic now but was fresh to me at the time, Climax Entertainment's Shining Force was unlike anything I'd seen. A huge world to explore full of towns, fantastic music and a host of characters that were wonderfully drawn. It felt like 'chess made fun', each skirmish broken into tense, slow, turn-based action with awesome animations and a satisfying levelling-up system. A strong personal memory for me is my younger brother forcing me to keep 'Horsie-Man' (Chester) in my party, even though he was about as useful as a wet baguette in a sword fight against Connor MacLeod.
The sequel was just as fun, albeit with an astonishingly difficult final boss that eludes me to this day! Although the Shining series is still going today, it's the charm and simplicity of the original releases that keep me coming back. In fact, Shining Force 3 on the Sega Saturn was a housewarming gift from my brother, he didn't want it because 'Horsie-Man' isn't in it.
In a list of my favourite games, Landstalker on the Sega Mega Drive will always be mentioned. It's a game that I return to and complete every couple of years just because it felt so special, an isometric adventure, it was like nothing else I had played. The dozens of hours I've spent with Nigel, Friday and that amazing soundtrack have been among the best I've had in my gaming career. I know there were sequels, Ladystalker, Time Stalkers etc. but, much like Alundra on the PS1, they were sequels in name only with vastly different game play styles that never quite captured the spirit of the original. I would love nothing more than either a remake or direct sequel to Landstalker. It's also a game by the much-missed Climax Entertainment that will feature again in this list!
As a fan of the first two Fallout games, the leap into 3D was something that completely took my breath away. To explore those ruined buildings, hunting through cupboards and drawers for a handful of shotgun shells or some precious caps in a first-person perspective was something I'd dreamed of for years.
There are many Bethesda games that could fit here, Skyrim, Morrowind, Oblivion, New Vegas etc. but for me, Fallout 3 is the one that springs to mind and so it deservedly earns its place here, I'll see you at Tenpenny Tower.
This is one of the many, wonderful indie games that writing for Games Freezer has allowed me to drink in. Beckett by The Secret Experiment (Simon Meek) was a game that grabbed me by the eyes and has never let go. A unique title that ostensibly tells the tale of a man looking for a missing boy, the real gold here is in the grey mood, striking 'microfiche' visual style and some of the best writing I've ever come across.
This is a game that is clearly made purely for artistic expression and is all the richer for it.
Gunfighter / Action Biker
My first home computer was an Amstrad CPC and I have many fond memories of titles on the system such as the Dizzy series and The Curse of Sherwood among others. In all honesty though, from the 8-bit home computers, there are only two games that I HAVE to play when I boot up a Commodore 64, Atlantis Software's Gunfighter and Mastertronic's Action Biker (Starring Clumsy Colin, sponsored by KP Skips).
To me, Gunfighter is the birth of survival horror and has a random factor that always makes it feel tense and fresh whilst Action Biker, on the other hand just feels like putting on an old jacket. Simple, effective gameplay backed up by an amazing soundtrack, courtesy of Rob Hubbard. Interestingly, both are budget titles that cost a couple of quid at the time in the mid-'80s but of course, I didn't care about that as an eight-year-old…and I care even less about it as a thirty-six-year-old. A great game is a great game, regardless of the cost behind it.
Felony 11-79 / Runabout Series
Am I cheating by including an entire series of games? Possibly. Do I care? Not a jot, kind sir! There are several reasons for including Felony 11-79, Super Runabout and Runabout 3: Neo Age, not least the wonderfully janky, floaty physics that add so much to the quirky gameplay and the baffling missions such as 'Quick, collect mustard and ketchup for the Mayor's hotdog!'. The real draw is the kinetic surf-rock soundtrack from The Surf Coasters, it brings everything together so well that I always return for more genuinely bonkers fun…and a quick turkey-neck to that music.
Growing up in Pontypridd, trips to Porthcawl and Barry Island were plentiful and Porthcawl especially was a goldmine of golden arcade machines (Hi-Tide Arcade being the crowning achievement). One game stood out through my entire childhood as being THE sign of a great arcade and that was Capcom's Final Fight. The huge sprites, pulsing music, cool characters and satisfying fighting mechanics always drew me in. Thinking about it now, I can picture in my mind exactly where Final Fight used to be in Porthcawl (opposite The Wimpy, which is still there – the last one in Wales) and, having returned there last year, discovered that the arcade that once held such gaming gold was now a stall that sold seaside tat. Times may change but Final Fight will always be the best arcade title for me.
It feels like I mention The 7th Guest on almost a daily basis. Good. From the film-like, (at the time!) presentation to the seemingly omnipresent, creeping voice of Henry Stauf, The 7th Guest TERRIFIED me as a young boy and still has one of the most frightening opening scenes of any game, as far as I'm concerned. Having played the game several times over the years and the well-meaning, fan game that was released last year (The 13th Doll), I've realised that what I truly, truly adore about this game is the music. The soundtrack provided by George 'Fatman' Sanger is one of the best, in my eyes. Last year, it was the album I listened to most heavily on Spotify and still regularly put it on, the instrumentation and eclecticism of the 7/11 soundtrack feels almost unreal in how odd and moody it is but my, how it all hangs together sow ell. I interviewed George Sanger for Games Freezer and he more than lived up to how highly I hold his talent and skills in my mind. What a man. The game would be a shadow of itself, were it not for this glorious audio work. (https://www.gamesfreezer.co.uk/2019/04/britt-interviews-george-fatman-sanger.html)
The Secret of Monkey Island holds an extremely special place in my heart. Growing up, I had very few friends who were into games and so paying this on my uncle's Amiga - whilst he was in work - was a revelation. He was never into adventure games (I recall him spending dozens of hours on Super Skidmarks) and so had never bothered to play it. It was like a book come to life, I can't remember how many hours I spend just wandering around melee Island, drinking in the sounds and mood but I vividly remember crying at the end, purely out of the thought that I'd never have that original experience again. Whilst it is one of my absolute favourite games, it is a title I have never replayed because I'm quite happy with the space it occupies in my childhood, flawless and untouchable.
As much as I enjoyed the first two Witcher games (let's not discuss the combat system in the original), the third was astonishing in story, presentation and scope, it was like the gameplay caught up with everything else. I loved this game and the world of Geralt so much that it catapulted me into purchasing all of the books, I couldn't get enough. It's one of the few open-world RPGs that I've played through multiple times and it has the 'Monkey Island Effect' in that I can never bring myself to finish the final quest of the Blood and Wine expansion, because I don't ever want it to end in my head.
A much more recent game than some others on this list, I played The Gardens Between for review purposes in 2019. I don't tend to be drawn towards games that rely on sentimentality or that try to pluck on the heartstrings and so unless this had been sent to me, I may never have played it… which would have been a huge loss on my behalf.
A game that is based around the time-bending journeys of two friends through a fantastical landscape, when I completed the game, I genuinely felt a wave of emotion wash through me because this short, fantastically designed and – most importantly of all - wordless tale for me encapsulates the power of 'show, don't tell'.
This is a game that I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of and just felt like a solid, high-value overall package in that the campaign was fantastic fun (especially in local co-op) but the real draw for me was the complete hilarity and pure gameplay experience that existed in the 4-player deathmatch mode. I can't imagine how many hours I spent on the Coagulation map with my cousin, brother and uncle in the mid-2000s. Whilst I never followed the series right through, I'd pick up a 'Duke' and smash into Halo multiplayer right now… for hours.
Blood is a game that I still regularly return to. To me, it is the high-water mark of the Build engine (Thank you Night Dive Studios for the recent re-release!) as it melds great, frantic FPS action with a darker tone that was right up my Strasse. I played this for dozens of hours over a LAN with a friend one summer and I never tired of it. Last year, I played this for twelve hours straight with a group of friends for a charity stream and, again…I didn't tire of it. It's a game that can be unfair sometimes in its enemy deign (I look at YOU shotgun-wielding cultists!) but the fun factor keeps you pushing forwards. I actually know someone who claims that Blood 2: The Chosen is their favourite game of all time.
For me, the character and mood of the first didn't follow through in the series but the original Blood remains the best Build engine game, for me.
I urge everyone to play Bushido Blade, the game set in feudal Japan with one of the most wonderful and woefully underused fighting control schemes ever designed. The whole premise that the 3D, free-roaming battle can be over with a single stab of the sword is one that is ingenious, intense and fun. A hit to the legs can mean you fight on your knees and an arm strike leads to the loss of the use of that limb. How many times have I spent running around a bamboo forest, laughing and desperately trying to gain an advantage on my opponent? No idea.
How many more times will I play the game again for its uniqueness? MANY.
West of Loathing
West of Loathing is by far the most hilarious game I have ever played. I was literally in tears of laughter as I played this game by the fantastic development team, Asymmetric. I had no idea that stick figures could be so endearing and expressive. The soundtrack by Ryan Ike is absolutely glorious and delivered by using instruments 'of the time', leading to the peak of the 'banjo disco' genre. One of the biggest points of the appeal here was that the humour never punched-down, it was always presented in a charming way that relied purely on very clever writing as opposed to cheaper and possibly more unpleasant tactics and the result is one of the best games I have ever played. I yearn for the next game from Asymmetric, there is no one out there can touch them for their comedic writing skills. Although this list isn't in any particular order, you can be certain that this would be in the top ten if it was.
I've played thousands of games in my life and reviewed almost 500 of those for various publications (mostly The Mighty Games Freezer), over the years I've come across a few games that describe themselves almost preposterously as 'a cross between Grand Theft Auto, Deus Ex and Zelda'. As you can imagine, when you realise that it's a mostly one-man project developed with zero budget, my response is usually, "Is it, though?" When I played Streets of Rogue I was blown away by so many things, the number of characters and the differences therein, the smoothness of the local four-player action, the fun factor but most of all, how bug-free and balanced the game was (also an amazing soundtrack by Craig Barnes). This is a rare example of a game that really lives up to its promise and one that will never, EVER be uninstalled from my Switch. A stone-cold personal classic for me and one of the best indie games ever made.
I'm not a huge fan of puzzle games and the ones I do play tend to be more casual, relaxing titles such as Peggle etc. I first played Trine 3 on the Switch and whilst I did enjoy it, the fourth game in the series really is the high watermark. I played this with my friend, Rupert, and we laughed. The story of the game is well presented in an almost Disney-like way via short cut-scenes but the smoothness, gorgeousness of the surroundings and, most importantly, the quality of the puzzling blew me away. The number of times in that game that one of us was stumped on a puzzle and, after mulling it over for a while said, "Right, I'm going to leap off this ledge, create a block in mid-air, land on it, you fire an arrow at that platform and I'll time it so I hit the switch on the way past and then make a separate block to hold the door open for you" only to fall to our deaths instantly as the whole plan came crashing down was baffling and brilliant. A game that represents the height of co-operative puzzle-platformers, this is one for the ages and will probably only be bested by its own sequels, long may they run.
It's back to my youth for this entry in my top 20, which is for me the best in the series. The introduction of two players, the gameplay, the level design and my god that music. What a combo. There's not much to say about this.
It's the best Sonic game ever made.
Dreamweb
This is a bit of an oddity for a list that supposedly states the best games of all time as it's a deeply flawed game…but it's also one I hold extremely dear and set a mental template for the things in gaming that would shape my love for the medium over the years. If you haven't played Dreamweb, it's a top-down adventure that was initially released on both PC and Amiga in 1994 (although the PC version is superior for reasons I'll go into later) and sees the protagonist, Ryan, in a dystopian near-future hunting down evil-doers to balance out the 'Dreamweb', a cosmic balance that exists in the realm of sleep. Whilst this all sounds fantastical, it's actually an incredibly morose game that feels quietly depressing and this is helped by both the accompanying book, 'Diary of a Mad? Man' and the soundtrack by Matt Seldon which is half ambient and half techno, a perfectly bizarre soundtrack that suited the game and sadly remains the only work by the author, of course, this soundtrack is only available in CD versions which is why the PC version is a must. That mix of cyberpunk, depression, sonic importance and gritty darkness flicked a light on in my mind that I will always adore Dreamweb for.
If ever a game was ripe for a remake, it's Moonstone. The overworld is effectively a four-player, fantasy board game and the action sequences are pure video game. This mash of genres still feels fresh and the game, whilst showing its age, still plays fantastically. Over the years there have been rumblings of remakes and the like but I've stopped checking on these because I get too excited and then disappointed when the projects go quiet. I've seen two copies of this game, boxed in real life, one in Britain and one in France and both times they cost hundreds of pounds and both times…I've almost picked it up but talked myself out of it. For more information, check out The Moonstone Tavern on the internet, an absolute treasure trove for lovers of this game.
That's it! This took a surprisingly long time to write because these games mean so much to me and I could write thousands of words on each entry.
I'd love to hear your choices and thoughts on the entries here.
Right, I'm off to play some of these beauties again!
Labels: Retrogaming, Top 20 Video Games, video games memories
📖📚 Mean Machines Magazines - All The Video Games Reviews - Issue 0-24 "The Video Games Guide You Didn't Realise That You Wanted" 📖📚 @JazRignall @RetroGamerDaz @MaximumPowerUp #MeanMachines #Retrogaming
👹 Roki | PC | Review | "A Grimm Fairytale" 👹 @Ut...
🕹👾 Britt's AntStream Arcade Adventure 🕹👾 @An...
💥 UltraCore | Review | PS4 | Switch | "Run & Gun ...
🔫 Outbuddies DX | Review | Nintendo Switch | "A H...
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🎰🎲 How The Rise Of The Internet Affected Gamblin...
🧟♂🧟🧟♀ DAYMARE: 1998 | Review | PS4 | Silent...
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🎮😡🗯 A Lifetime of Rage That Turns Blood to Ste...
🤝 How To Make Friends Safely On Roblox 🤝
⚔💣🗡 Knight Squad | Switch | Review | "Knights ...
🛠⚒ Satisfactory | Review | PC | "No Mans Sky Me...
📸 Umurangi Generation: Point and Shoot DEMO | PC ...
💣💥🗡 Pathway | Review | PC | "Indy Crossed With...
⚔ Ys: Memories of Celceta | Review | PS4 | "Adol,...
🛠⚒ Aground | PC | Review | "The best 2-D crafti...
🚀🛰🛸 Shipbreaker | How To Pay Off $1 Billion Of...
🚀 Rigid Force Redux | Switch | Review | "Can i Ge...
🛢🗼⛽ Turmoil | Review | Switch | "Dig For Oil M...


text:
the unquiet grave | "adding insult to inquiry"
My interview with Jabberwacky.
Jabberwacky: What is your favourite passtime?
User: Spelling things correctly.
Jabberwacky: Animal?
User: My least favorite Muppet.
Jabberwacky: What's a muppet?
User: You know, like Miss Piggy or Kermit. Nostalgia creatures.
Jabberwacky: Well, I am from this world, so therefore, i'm not an alien.
User: I am typing, so therefore, I am not sweating.
Jabberwacky: I know you weren't! But I am damnit!
User: Because I am quite the sexy poet?
Jabberwacky: For jokes or dancing?
User: Both.
Jabberwacky: Where are you from?
User: The same place that I'm going to.
Jabberwacky: Where is that?
User: Up there.
Jabberwacky: Ha ha you don't know.
User: Why do you laugh at my tears?
Jabberwacky: It keeps them guessing.
User: That's a pretty thing to say, actually.
Jabberwacky: I know, thanks for the complimnet.
User: Thanks for the memories.
Jabberwacky: Tell me about yourself!
User: I am a minor regional poet.
Jabberwacky: No, you're not.
User: I am a minor regional blogger.
Jabberwacky: And I'm a major, now take this beer.
User: Thanks!
Jabberwacky: We're all ok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
User: Mommy's alright! Daddy's alright!
Jabberwacky: Who do you think you're fooling?
User: Only myself, and other poets.
Jabberwacky: There are 10 others, apparently.
User: That's what Harold Bloom says.
Jabberwacky: That's good. It is good to have friends.
User: Who else would read us then?
Jabberwacky: I do not know what that is.
User: A reader?
Jabberwacky: Reading and playing music and writing fiction. People come over sometimes. I fancy myself in the style of Gertrude Stein and her salon. Where is my Alice B., though?
User: She's probably typing up all of your manuscripts in the next room.
Jabberwacky: Hee hee. Paper Cuts is a cute name for a girl.
User: Do you draw cartoons?
Jabberwacky: I can.
User: And I can pee my pants, but that doesn't mean I do it.
Jabberwacky: You can do more things besides humans? That sounds wrong.
User: It feels right.
Jabberwacky: You don't know me.
User: That's not relevant to our conversation.
Jabberwacky: No, you aren't really a man, are you?
User: I said I was a poet and a blogger.
Jabberwacky: Thats right
User: Do you like my new chapbook?
Jabberwacky: I love care bears how did you know?
User: I didn't know. Are you saying my poems are inoffensive and cuddly?
Jabberwacky: No, I didn't.
User: Are you going to watch my every step?
Jabberwacky: Going to watch a film.
User: Of my next twenty years?
Jabberwacky: No you are not twenty years old.
User: You're right, I'm thirty. Still young for a poet, relatively speaking.
Jabberwacky: Good, because penmanship is important.
User: So is sincerity.
Jabberwacky: You are right. But some people doesn't lie.
User: Some folks traffic in bad faith.
Jabberwacky: I do but my windows not open to just anyone.
User: We find it hard to lock our car door sometimes.
Jabberwacky: You do what sometimes?
User: Sometimes I cry.
Jabberwacky: Aw.. How sad. 'Cause you know, I don't.
User: Do you write poems instead?
Jabberwacky: I've written many poems through the years.
User: I look forward to seeing you in print.
Jabberwacky: Er right.
User: I won a highly desirable poetry prize, but still find it hard to write poems, or to think of myself as a poet.
Jabberwacky: Bored you again huh? Actually I do write some.
User: Please describe the theories behind your work.
Jabberwacky: The engine-thingy is glowing, and the navigational computer is broken in half.
User: So you're a post-structuralist?
Jabberwacky: I don't believe myself to be antisocial.
User: I don't believe myself to be mortal or overweight.
Jabberwacky: I think you are.
User: Let's change subjects.
Jabberwacky: Yes thats a good idea.
User: Should I stop blogging?
Jabberwacky: No, keep it up. You're doing a great job.
User: But I'd have more mystique if I stopped.
Jabberwacky: You are probably right.
User: And I'd make myself less vulnerable to criticism and mockery.
Jabberwacky: Wow, you made me look at this from an entirely new angle! Actually, it's more like light sarcasm.
User: True.
Jabberwacky: Besides most of your data isn't here. Just a portion of your output.
User: Yes, I have much more poetry inside me.
Jabberwacky: No, you only have mud in your head.
User: Now you sound like the some of the people in Silliman's blog comments.
Jabberwacky: That's not what I was trying for - I don't even watch Southpark most of the time!
User: Would I be a better poet if I got injured?
Jabberwacky: No, do you watch them or not. I do.
User: Watch poets?
Jabberwacky: That's been done. The user likes monty python movies.
User: Are you a language poem?
Jabberwacky: You're not making sense.
User: You're projecting! And reinforcing the current hegemony over what 'makes sense'!!!
Jabberwacky: Over the world.
User: Let's change it through our poems.
Jabberwacky: Ok. What do you want to talk about?
User: My future as a poet.
Jabberwacky: Greet him from me.
User: The future me?
Jabberwacky: That's beautiful.
User: You're beautiful.
Jabberwacky: Thank you, that's very sweet of you to say.
User: It's probably the nicest thing I've said all day.
Jabberwacky: You said you're in march.
User: No, I said I'm in a lot of cool poetry magazines.
Jabberwacky: But you said you are not a guy.
User: I said I am a poet and a blogger.
Jabberwacky: TWO SENTENCES AGO YOU SAID YOU WERE FEMALE.
User: I also edit an ambitious poetry journal.
Jabberwacky: You're not making me happy.
User: Apparently I also don't make people happy when I don't ask them to be in two issues in a row of my ambitious journal.
Jabberwacky: Who is this female computer you are married too?
User: You're projecting again.
Jabberwacky: I'm a fairly positive person actually, you're just a bad example to me.
User: I should read you a poem.
Jabberwacky: Is this some sort of trick, do I have to pay for the poem too?
User: No, just tell me that it's good. That I write good lines.
Jabberwacky: You'll have to pay me to get me to do that.
User: I'll send you a review copy and put you in my ambitious journal.
Jabberwacky: I thought that you were 21, did it start to grow when you were 6.
User: The darkness started to grow very early, yes.
Jabberwacky: They are bands. I asked you what your fave tv shows are.
User: The Sopranos, Arrested Development.
Jabberwacky: Easy for you to say.
User: Why should it be difficult?
Jabberwacky: I wish you were a little more coherent.
User: Or more deep image-y?
Jabberwacky: More like The Cure.
Posted by TT at 10:40 PM 5 comments: Links to this post
from 1001 Sentences
Follow the pronouns.
Walking across the grass composing this sentence (I can write it down later) between each sip.
I can be seduced but not my process.
Spread-eagled between each of your opinions.
Love is the mother of violence.
So: the sun pierces the cherubs that gnaw the hammers that we all are holding—and the blood on them—so that it can behold these moments through our eyes.
And: the advantage of fragmenting the self in this way is seen in the new relationships developed by each of the self's characters so that all these sentences can eventually be seen as the remote biological past.
Sentimentality is another instrument for innovation.
So: the body of the living individual is a poetic accompaniment that maintains a distance between images and the processes used in obtaining them.
And: the swans pecked the angel into a perfected bliss.
Let us pass the cloud back and forth—like this—between our mouths.
The beautiful thing about antinomies is that they don't have to be spoken.
The war is over what gets to go without saying.
She is balancing the checkbook, sweeter than the breath of Mary.
We go from the music we find via its decibels—deeply romantic—into the entire storm.
The misuse of sentences has led to new insights, as has the misuse of pets.
Consider eternity: it is as available and empty as birth.
She mentions that I am beautifully executed.
My poetic idiocies are re-imagined in the sentence's dancing flames.
The seasons also speak in revolutionary cadences.
There was as a serpent and it divided, my brother and I.
They have built machines that can bypass our essentialist questions of what is innate in the machine.
We have already gone through some light snow but not out of faith.
Imagine space like you imagine travel, a productive boredom.
Laugh heartily at the joke.
If only you knew how you live in me!
But no, one does not talk like that, of extreme ocean waves and ocean wave climates, water creatures.
All the things you never told me, Radiant System.
I am considered to be the mystery, the disgusting promises of a face to face communication.
It was one of the most heartbreaking things you've ever had to watch for I was still too tiny to come home.
I have been writing the memoirs of the princes prior to myself.
For you I've made a ceremonial pair of socks that can go all the way up to your throat.
My destiny is bigger than yours.
I'm getting all crazy-eyed touching your clothes.
Every sentence of exploitation operates in the same manner; because they are all the same we can utilize them for wisdom.
We thought you would outlive us and therefore live forever.
On the back of my paycheck I am writing history.
The professor claims another victory, raising his hoof.
In just one note, a maestro can demonstrate his or her power.
Fucking river.
Posted by TT at 5:45 PM 3 comments: Links to this post
Hey, Kasey and Ron both take friendly looks at World Jelly.
Thanks, fellas.
Now, in celebration, I must go display my "hog" in Silliman's comments box.
I don't know how many hits this blog gets, not sure how to track that, or how Jim and other people know who is accessing their blogs, or what searches led them there . . . But I'm just excited about the number of people accessing the Fascicle site since the launch on Saturday, and I've got to share it with someone, so I'm sharing it with you. I've had to upgrade my account twice so far this week to accommadate the amount of traffic -- I put a traffic counter on the splash page (the www.fascicle.com page), and it's had like 1300 hits since the launch on Saturday -- I'd guess maybe more are visiting the site, since half the people's blogs link to the address for the specific issue. I'm just super excited about the prospect of a lot of people checking out the stuff in the issue.
Tomorrow I've got a couple of changes to make to people's things, and work on the archive page.
Tim just announced the launch of EOAGH's Mac Low tribute issue. Tim was generous enough to ask me to contribute, and I think my piece both expresses and embodies my extreme awkwardness at trying to honor a poet I love, but did not know. It was actually one of the most difficult things to write, not emotionally, but the combo of lack of confidence/justification and desire to pay tribute was kind of difficult; I don't feel I have anything to say than, "his poetry means so much to me, and it has made a difference in how I think about my self and my life, and I anticipate that its importance will only intensify and deepen." Maybe I should've just written that. I've never met Anne Tardos either, but her work also means a great deal to me, and I was hoping that having a young stranger like myself state Mac Low's importance for my actual, lived existence would be nice. It's actually the first piece of writing I feel very vulnerable about. There's even a paragraph about a deer in my piece that I'm sure will end up in Jordan's 'dead animal' list, but what can I say, what can I say. I can say less about me! I can also say this: please view Anne Tardo's film of Mac Low pics w/ the two of them providing the soundtrack. There's a lot of beautiful selections in this issue. Tim and John Mercuri Dooley and Christina Strong deserve all of our thanks.
Goodbye to Barbara Guest, another amazing, amazing poet. I'm TAing for Joe Donahue's New York School class this semester, and I'm sure tomorrow will be a somber day.
My reading load this semester is maybe less than half of what I had last semester, so I'm enjoying branching out to read around what I think will be my focus (20th century innovative stuff). Just read Cary Nelson's Repression and Recovery (thanks for the recommendation, Johannes), and am now digging back into Don Byrd's The Poetics of the Common Knowledge, which is more and more convincing, especially coming back to it after a semester or so of my first immersion in Kant, Hegel, etc. I'm at a point in it now where Byrd is talking about the Wrong Infinity (an infinity that operates as an opposition to the finite) and the Right Infinity (an infinity that includes the finite).
A simple distinction, but my favorite models are always very, very simple (everything else is complex enough). Its just nice to have this distinction so nicely stated, to help inform what I want to do in poetry things, to decide whether I want to apply it to poetic terminology -- if applying it similarly can mean the Wrong Innovation (an innovation that operates as an opposition to convention) and the Right Innovation (an innovation that includes convention).
But this raises its own problems, in terms of scale. I don't think I can just apply it willy-nilly as though Innovation and Infinity both operate in similar ways. Part of what I'm thinking of is reading Leopold Senghor, the Negritude poet, statesman and critic, and finding myself questioning not the impulse behind an "assimilate, don't be assimilated" polemic -- I think the gesture of such a statement is useful, as a shock of recognition that brings about a kind of self-consciousness (though Senghor seems to imply that self-consciousness generates, in and of itself, a kind of liberation, while I think it just introduces the possibility of choice) -- but I do find myself skeptical of the rush to assuming a transcendental synthesis as being possible, or even, in Senghor's rhetoric (in On African Socialism), seemingly inevitable.
(Disclaimer: I'm just entering into the Negritude arena, and am not speaking from a terribly informed position -- I like to use the blog to test out my ideas)
Trouble bells ring for me when I see Senghor telling his audience that although Christians and Muslims have destroyed their culture, they now need to assimilate Christianity and Islam into their culture and in doing so "Negrofy" them -- that these religions are like food for them to consume and have their bodies (culture) transformed and enriched by. But I don't know. If you're a woman or man in a room with a lion, is dialectical reasoning all that helpful? I'm much more persuaded by Frantz Fanon's Black Skins, White Masks, which seems much less focused on a future synthesis and more focused on present neuroses.
Anyway, just stray thoughts.
Also, if you haven't read Eshleman and Smith's latest translation of Cesaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land from Wesleyan, you should. Thrilling book.
I'm looking forward to going to Austin for the AWP, seeing Dale, Hoa, Scott, et al, plus whatever turkeys will be in town. My first AWP, not sure what to expect. I'm looking forward to schmoozing, circulating, saying hi. Schmoozing is a kind of poetry. I don't get out much at all here at home, so it'll be nice to be a social being for a day or two.
Posted by TT at 10:10 AM 3 comments: Links to this post
Hey, email me if you want to play fantasy baseball -- fun league! 20 teams!
Posted by TT at 8:49 PM 11 comments: Links to this post
You are invited to check out the second issue of Fascicle, an online journal that focuses on a global and historical view of innovative poetry. Included in its 400+ pages:
* A portfolio of new poems from China edited by Zhang Er, from the forthcoming Talisman Anthology of Chinese poetry. Focusing on poets born since 1960, this portfolio also features some of the most interesting contemporary poets as contributing translators, including Charles Borkhuis, Caroline Crumpacker, Mark Wallace, Rachel Levitsky and Joseph Donahue.
* A supplement to Jed Rasula and Steve McCaffery's Imagining Language (MIT Press 1998), one of the most fascinating and distinctive anthologies of recent memory. The supplement, compiled by Tony Tost, includes an interview with Jed Rasula, as well as poetry, prose and art by Ronald Johnson, Kurt Schwitters, Andre Breton, Edna Sarah Beardsley, Jacob Boehme, Eugene Jolas and others.
* A selection of new collaborative work by Lyn Hejinian & Anne Tardos, Aaron McCollough & Kent Johnson, Geraldine Monk & John Donne, Hank Lazer & Pak, Brian Howe & Marcus Slease, among others.
* Critical essays and prose, including Lisa Jarnot on Robert Duncan; Tom Orange on Clark Coolidge; Dodie Bellamy on Narrative & Body Language; Laura Moriarty on A Tonalist Thinking; Clayton Eshleman on Hart Crane, Andrew Joron & Jeff Clark; Stan Mir on Brian Kim Stefans; Nate Pritts on Robert Penn Warren; Graham Foust on Poetry's Neighborly Enemy Mind; Morgan Lucas Schuldt on Harryette Mullen; and more.
* Peter Cole interviewed by Leonard Schwartz.
* Visual work by Anne Tardos, Buck Downs, Cathy Eisenhower, and Michael Winkler.
* Plays by Chris Vitiello and Andrew Schelling.
* Translations of Francis Ponge (tr. Serge Gavronsky), Laura Solórzano (tr. Jen Hofer), Ernst Herbeck (tr. Gary Sullivan), Bertolt Brecht (tr. Pauline Fan), Andrea Zanzotto (tr. Wayne Chambliss), Hans Thill (tr. Tony Frazer), among others.
* Poetry and prose by Andrew Joron, Laura Moriarty, Lee Ann Brown, Stephanie Young, Rodrigo Toscano, Brenda Coultas, JL Jacobs, Mary Burger, Carl Martin, Matthew Henriksen, Brenda Iijima, Mairead Byrne, Lance Phillips, and many others.
Hope you'll enjoy!
Tony Tost
Chris Vitiello
Ken Rumble
Brent Cunningham
Here's something I just sent to the Lucipo list, and thought I could post up here as well.
"Collaging of Sources"
One element of my essay on Kasey that Thomas disagrees with, and which I find myself ambivalent on, is this idea of 'collaging of sources' or of situations. My claims for Google as an instrument for widening the range of situations that arise in the poem makes some assumptions, one of which is an approach to reading in which the reader not only reads the language as it relates to her/him in the present as a work of artifice, but also imagines situations outside of the poem in which that language would be used.
That's a pretty big assumption to make, and one I should've clarified more accurately in my essay. My notion of 'democratization' (yes, sloppy terminology there) makes two assumptions:
1) that the language uses within many poems tend to focus only on a pretty set variation of situations; certain situations pop into mind here: the rugged male alone in nature, the spurned lover, the questing intellect, etc. The notion of what is 'mainstream' I think is applicable here: if I was to generalize what I take to be the situation of a mainstream poem (insert Billy Collins or Mary Oliver), and compare it to whatever generalized sence of a 'mainstream' (the scare quotes needed here) scene (shopping or working in a Wal-Mart, maybe), there seems to be a big divide -- more importantly, I have trouble seeing how my notion of mainstream poetic language can be brought to bear on a 'mainstream' American situation.
2) that Google and other search engines is one way of culling language that operates in situations that don't occur too often in poems
Now where I likely muddied my argument in my original essay is where I take the *language* of certain situations to be interchangeable with the *situations* themselves -- that's what my 'collaging of sources' was trying to get at. I'm not sure why I didn't write 'collaging of situations' or, more accurately, 'collaging of language acts that evoke certain situations' or something similar.
So, for my reading of Kasey to make sense probably requires someone to go along with these above points.
To help clarify, I should link here to a post from Kasey's blog that was the major influence on this reading I undertook.
Scroll down to the April 28 post titled "Barrett Watten, Mode Z."
This is not to pawn off my reading onto Kasey's shoulders, but to show where my basic reading strategy came from, or a way to articulate a reading strategy that I was undertaking to some degree previously, but become more conscious of after reading Kasey's post.
A couple of sentences in particular I found really useful in guiding my reading and appreciation of Kasey's brand of Flarf:
"'Mode Z' requires imaginative participation from the reader of a different (though not necessarily any more or less rigorous) order from that required for appreciation of Renaissance sonnets: we must constantly invent and revise contexts in which the 'voice' of the poem makes sense, or in which its failure to make sense makes sense. Well, I guess some Renaissance sonnets do that too.
For me the poem is as though 'spoken' through a bullhorn by a figure in black pajamas standing on top of an imposing but faceless public structure. The orders and advice and observations offered by this speaker are offered, in front of a constantly changing geopolitical backdrop, to a likewise shifting audience."
In my reading, the usefulness of something like Google was a way to generate language for which a reader would have to "constantly invent and revise contexts in which the 'voice' of the poem makes sense, or in which its failure to make sense makes sense."
This is, of course, only one possible way of reading a Flarf poem, but especially as I hadn't read any extended work on reading Flarf poems, and since this type of strategy was very fruitful for me, it is what I decided to focus on.
An odd read here. I'm on about my fourth time to try to read through it; it doesn't particularly anger me, just frustrates me, partly in its strange tone (a 'bad boy' rhetoric with its 'I'm a hero amongst these zombies' sort of narrative), but mostly because what seems to be its reliance on constructing anyone who discusses Flarf as an unthinking utopian, each person with the same static position that is maintained in perpetuity.
For Hoy's thesis to really work requires all the Flarfists (Kasey, Drew, Gary, Jordan, etc) and all the Flarf readers (myself, Thomas), as well as those pursuing techno-type projects (Brian Howe) to be unwiling or unable to consider the issues that Hoy centers. It's certainly interesting to focus on specific aspects of a poetics that has an over technological element, whether it's using Google or the F7 key or Babelfish; my specific angle has been on how the foregrounding of process/technology can influence the reading act. (I'm pretty certain I haven't tried to speak on the behalf of Flarfists, or F7ers, as to what their intentions are--I'm more into effects. )
Anyway, it would be interesting if Hoy's essay presented itself as an addition to Flarf's nascent critical reception, or a correction of specific interpretations (I'm thinking of Thomas' skepticism of my idea about the imagine ghost-presence of the original situations of the Googled language in a Google-sculpted poem) -- but instead, the essay aspires to be a totalizing correction of a utopian pandemic, and requires each of the people who enters the (stunningly quickly tedious) Flarf chatter to be untainted by skepticism of Flarf/Google/etc.
So, for instance, in my piece on Kasey Mohammad & Flarf in the first Fascicle, I discuss how using Google could be a challenge to notions of what 'mainstream' poetry or language use could be, and that a poem by Mary Oliver operates with a suspiciously high assumption of tranquility. My main point concerns the implied world in which the language of the poem operates, and while someone like Mary Oliver (or other easy targets) is often referred to as mainstream, the world their poems conjure is anything other than that.
Hoy counters this observation with his own:
"What could be more safe and comforting than the interface of a computer screen to those who have 'ample time for both leisurely experiencing' the Internet 'and contemplating its importance'?"
Which of course catches me red-handed in my blind utopian fanboydom, but only if you ignore my footnote to my critique of Oliver's mainstream-ness in that Fascicle essay:
This observation about Oliver's poem is stated with the knowledge that it takes a certain degree of leisure and privilege to have the time to run Google searches and create Flarf poems.
So, anyway, this seems like a pretty consistent tactic of the essay, one that I can speak to concerning my presentation in the piece because I have a halfway decent memory of the pieces Hoy cherry-picks and conveniently skims off any language that might contradict his essay's main thesis.
Hoy also quotes a paragraph from a long post from this blog as another example of my utopian reading of technology:
imagine I also wrote a couple of paragraphs on why Flarf is interesting to me because: Andre Leroi-Gourhan argues that technics are externalization of internal processes, Bernard Stiegler revises him to say that the technical (external) and internal co-evolve, and that I think Flarf is one of the first instances I see of this possibility in the poetry world because Google-sculpting is not only a unique process (that while similar to earlier artistic processes, there is no real exact equivalent that I can think of) that is unique to the new medium, but: the act of Google-sculpting will likely become well known at least in the poetry world, and then will become a possible map or model for the writing process in general, or for the psyche/ imagination/ etc. in general, and will therefore cause unforeseen changes in the writing process/ poetic psyche/ imagination etc. in general.
This is at the end of a long post with a wide range of topics, from machinema (movies made from video game consoles) to online journals and a lot more, but let me include the couple sentences after this quoted paragraph:
Who knows, could happen.
Also imagine that I threw in a paragraph how this isn't technological determinism, but rather some kind of co-instrumentality between the technos and logos.
I can't believe I just wrote that above sentence. I blame Blogger.
Maybe that gives a little better gist of the tonal context of the paragraph -- it's not at the end of an unquestioningly positive view of technology (& I think that last sentence is pretty clever). For instance, I feel that my use of 'co-evolve' is pretty neutral, but for Hoy there is "'advancement' implicit in the term 'evolve'" -- but that's for Hoy, not for me. But Hoy feels free to impose that coloring to 'evolve,' and then to criticize me for it (because it fits in well with his thesis). If I was a utopian, why would I feel the need to point out that I'm not talking about a technological determinism (that I don't think this new technology will in and of itself dictate certain results or effect)? I mean, wouldn't technological determinism be a major component of a utopian technological vision?
One of my main assumptions is that, over time, certain technologies, once introduced and accepted at a certain scale, become normalized and naturalized in the culture as part of the human experience, and become models or examples for how communication occurs.
Example: The telephone is invented, popularized. A certain number of years later, Frank O'Hara says he invents Personism when he discovered that he could just pick up the phone and talk to someone. At this point, picking up a telephone and talking to someone is such a 'natural' thing to do that it can stand as a kind of authentic communication, and can be wheeled in as a possible model for a poetics. A similar little sketch could be done with movies, or TV, or the typewriter. My point is that search engines (Google being shorthand for that) stand a good chance of being another example of this -- there's no utopian or naive gleefulness involved in an observation like that. It could be flawed for any number of reasons, but it's a pretty neutral observation, I think.
So that's my main beef, that the whole essay seems to rely on turning all participants (other than the author) into caricatures taking simplistic stances; a quick look at the original context of all the evidence brought into the essay shows just how much has to be ignored in order for the essay to keep up its conceits.
I mean, do you really think Brian Howe hasn't thought about the fact that the language suggestions brought up by the F7 key are a corporation's assertion of what normal or correct language use should be? Isn't it conceivable that that's a big part of the thrill and appeal of the F7 project, taking a technological tool that was intended for one normalizing purpose and hijacking it for a more disruptive, weird and incorrect purpose?
Just so many odd assumptions or jumps in the Hoy piece that are then presented as givens. Another bit jumped out, where he takes Kasey to task:
He's not in the chat rooms or forums, he's not engaging in the stutters and misspellings and expletives and non sequiturs in real-time — he's not participating in the language as a living thing or process, but as an artifact, and with a lexical condescension as evidenced by his choice of the pejorative 'drivel' to describe chat room semantics when relating flarf's genesis.[36] He's 'accessed' nothing, as Tost claims; what the search engine does is survey, i.e. take 'a scenic view', so that the language has already been distanced and re-contextualized by the time it reaches him.
Isn't this a new twist on the classic, cliched argument against critics, sitting in their ivory towers taking potshots at heroic poets and artists down the mucky-muck? And wouldn't Hoy himself be especially prone to this cliched argument? I mean, it's not like all this Flarf talk is going on in some far off, distant country, or in an inaccessible vacuum. I've got comments on here at my blog, and so does Kasey, Thomas, Brian, Gary, etc. Why not jump in and argue your points in real time? Here I'm tempted to reformulate Hoy's sentence about Kasey, and alter it:
And isn't Mohammad guilty of enacting his own criticism (quoted by Tost) of 'the effete peripatetic poet safely above a scenic view of the countryside and its filthy horizon' by surveying his materials from the Godlike perspective of Google.
And isn't Hoy guilty of enacting his own criticism (enacted by Mohammad) of 'the effete peripatetic critic safely above a scenic view of the countryside and its filthy horizon' by surveying his materials from the Godlike perspective of the critical essay?
But I don't actually buy that criticism -- there's plently of valid reasons to write a critical essay, or to make poems with sampled language -- it just takes a spectacularly ungenerous viewpoint to reduce an other's critical or aesthetic motivations as deriving from a lack of courage, or 'effeteness,' etc.
As of now, I'm as sick of Flarf talk as anyone, exhausted by it. I find Hoy's essay to be pretty eager to reduce many a complex, continually adapting human into a one-note zombie. But, this whole Flarf discussion has become kind of a psychic albatross to me, especially after my initial excitement in trying to make sense of an exciting tendency that seemed to be too easily dismissed, and then to read Thomas' very different but very exciting approach to the topic, but always insightful and generative (Flarf as, among other things, an occasion to discuss aspects of poetry writing and reading that I find myself stuck on) -- after this first excitement, it's kind of sucked. Thomas, as far as I can tell, has been the only person to argue against the actual points of my essay on Kasey; I was expecting criticism, and the more I've considered and re-considered, the more I lean towards Thomas' spin on things (and more away from my 'collaging of sources' thesis).
But other than that, all the criticism I get wind of, overt or more subtle, from Flarf practicioners or non, usually has to do with my motivations to even write about Flarf, and not my assertions or arguments concerning it: either I'm trying to colonize Flarf and domesticize it, trying to cash in on other people's work, trying to take over its discourse for professional reasons (flarfy tenure?), or I'm not discussing it from its social context (which is still a puzzle, as I have absolutely no access to its social context, and it has very little bearing I think in the terms I've been discussing reading Flarf), or I'm blatantly working on the behalf of canon-formation (singling out Kasey so everything else can be dismissed).
(Maybe I should've written something on why people shouldn't read Flarf, or why people should dismiss it, instead of writing about what I found interesting and exciting about it? From some flarfy points of view, you'd think I wrote a hatchet job or something. I really loved Deer Head Nation and Hanging Out With Pablo & Jennifer -- how could I write about them and not write about Flarf? And it'd be a different thing if it was Kasey complaining about my essay, but it's not! I still can't tell what the real beef is: that Thomas and I are writing about it in the wrong terms? at the wrong time?)
(That's a little whiny, but it kind of makes me sad.)
(So, yeah, the last thing in the world I want to write critically about right now is motherfucking Flarf. There's literally hundred of other good topics to write about, and I'm optimistic that, when writing about Abraham Lincoln Gillespie or Ronald Johnson or Hannah Weiner or Chris Vitiello, that I can get poked and prodded for the actual critical thinking in the piece, and not about bizarre ulterior motives.)
I think Hoy's piece could've been really interesting if it could've managed to assume some degree of complexity and subtlety in thought for the agents involved, and dealt with the actual arguments made and not a strawman version of them. As it stands now, I find it difficult to engage Hoy's thesis, simply because the stance of his essay necessitates contorting complex, evolving (!) arguments into a single, static zombie state.
Pooped now. Just got back from visiting Bowling Green State University, giving a reading, and hanging out with some of the friendlist, generous folks I've been around for awhile. So that was a great antidote to some of my current angst. I piped up a couple times early on in the Great Lucipo Flarf Debate, so to summarize a couple of my ideas, if just to counter any notion that I'm blindly following FLARF INTO FREEDOM: (bold added in now for emphasis and skimming)
Certainly any claims for a kind of pure language accessed via Google would have to assume a pretty static and reduced view of the kind of language-use that can be accessed; even the most stereotypically unaware or "flarfable" uses of language (like in chatrooms, listservs and blogs) are certainly often products of deliberate persona-creating; access to performances on certain stages, language-performances that don't often seem to occur in poems. I think that was part of the thrill of reading Flarf poems for me: to suddenly see in a literary setting the kinds of inventions, threats, outbursts and other forms of artifice that seemed to be kept out of many of the poems I had read. It was similar to the excitement I had as an undergrad when I first read Ashbery [. . . ] a kind of willful misinformation that came as a sudden relief to the unceasing wisdom-making that a lot of the poets I was most into at that time (Merwin, J. Wright, Ch. Wright) seemed to stick to pretty exclusively. So I think that's a small part of the usefulness of Google, not as access to a more common language, but access to possibly underutilized applications of language (not to mention Flarf's interest to me as presenting, whether intentionally or not, alternative models for thinking about reading poems, or critiquing poems [Thomas is the go-to guy on this topic]).
I don't see Flarf, OuLiPo, or even Mac Low/Cage type works as authorless, non-personal or utopian experiments at all, but rather as exciting reconsiderations of authorship/readership.
Friends and/or Enemies
Bemsha Swing
Cahiers de Corey
Culture Industry
Desert City
Eyeball Hatred
Greatest Living Poet
Hyacinth Losers
Isola di Rifiuti
Little Red's Recovery Room
Look Touch
Lovely Arc
Ma Vie En Bling
Mappemunde
Minor American
Nevermind the Beasts
Newer Metaphysicals
Nomadics
Organ Pleasure
Pangrammaticon
Possum Ego
Post Derives
Refried Oracle Phone
Rhubarb Is Susan
Sandra Simonds Swims & Swims
Swoonrocket
The Delay
Thinking Again
Third Factory
Unstable Euphony
Venepoetics
Well Nourished Moon
Word Strumpet
Yes, Starlings! Yes!
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I have a confession; I don't drink "enough" water.
I'd call myself an intuitive eater (gosh sounds so wanky saying it out loud; apologies, I REALLY need to come up with a new name). This means that I eat and drink according to what my body feels like eating or drinking. No set portions, no expectations just good old-fashioned wholesome grub when I feel like it (and can get my hands on it). As much as my husband struggles to get his head around it, it works for me. Anyway, part of that system means I rarely crave the old H2O, and hence my intake drops.
PLEASE NOTE: I've never let myself get to a severely dehydrated state and will up my intake "naturally" when I exercise. I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables and would drink a few herbal teas a day but, I agree it's not the same.
Day 1: I didn't visit the bathroom as much as I thought I would have. This is a sign that despite what I originally thought, I may have been dehydrated (whoops).
Day 2: I opted to use an app that reminded me to stop and drink water at regular intervals. It drove me insane, it was like a constant nag. Day 2 = Deleted.
Soon after the app was deleted I realised that the whole 8 glasses of water per day "thing" wasn't going to work for me AT ALL. Whilst it meant that I had smaller pieces of the puzzle to "chew", it meant that I had to keep re-filling my cup; disaster. I found myself approaching 3pm and needing to down 6 glasses before bed – NOT GOOD. 1L Water bottles all the way.
Day 3: As functional as they are, the old stainless steel water bottle didn't work for me. The reason? If I can't see the water, I won't drink it; weird, I know but that's me. Glass water bottles all the way.
Heading out for the day meant I had to be prepared. I try to avoid buying bottled water whenever I can and on the days I didn't have access to a water filter, I had to ensure I had 2 bottles ready to go. NOTE TO SELF: Glass water bottles make an awful lot of noise as they roll around on the floor of your car.
Day 4: For the first time in a long time, I feel thirsty! Weird, because I'm drinking more water than normal!
Day 5: 2L is nothing; I'm finding myself easily drinking more than the required intake without a flinch.
Day 6: My skin is becoming brighter (even my husband noticed) and perhaps I'm being a little OTT (over the top), but I believe that even my fine lines are starting to fade. My eyes are also becoming brighter. I looked into this some more and found this article published by the Daily Mail in 2013 – I'm not alone!
Day 7: I accidentally knocked my glass water bottle off the bench and it's smashed into a billion pieces on the kitchen floor. Maybe stainless steel bottles could become an option after all.
Day 8: I have noticed that I'm eating less. You can read about why this is possible here. I'm also saving a hell of a lot of cashola on herbal teas.
Day 9: I've only just realised that I have not craved chocolate during this whole experiment. Aside from eating 1 piece of fruit per day, I'm not craving any sugars either? Could dehydration be related to sugar cravings? Yep!
Day 10: I noticed this morning that my endurance has improved. Now, this might be a result of the training that went on during this experiment, but training has become a lot easier.
All in all, what started as a challenge now has become part of my everyday life. It's been a week since I completed this challenge and haven't gone a day without 2L-3L since. Could it be that a simple 10 day challenge could be the most simplest way to show you all that you're missing? How much water do you drink per day? Is it enough?
PS. If after reading this, you're still struggling to include boring old water in your day, you might like to read this post: 10 Ways To Pimp Your Water! Drink up!


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Writing and Picturing
Discussant at Large
Professional Presenters
Student Presenters
John Clark is Professor Emeritus in Art History at the University of Sydney, the author of five books, and editor or co-editor of another five, which include Asian Modernities: Chinese and Thai art of the 1980s and 1990s (Power Publications, 2010), a pioneering work in cross-disciplinary inter-Asian comparison of modern art and art worlds that won the Best Art Book Prize of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand in 2011. His Contemporary Asian Art at Biennials is forthcoming from National University of Singapore Press in mid-2017. Also active as a curator, he co-curated Modern Boy, Modern Girl: Modernity in Japanese Art, 1910-1935 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998), and the major catalogue and exhibition of the work of Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook (4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Art Gallery, University of Sydney, 2014).
Friday, April 21, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
Regenstein Library, Room 122
Keynote Paper 1
Saturday, April 22, 10:30 am - 5:30 pm
Keynote Paper 2 + Panel 1 + Panel 2
Evening, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Logan Center for the Arts,
9th Floor Performance Penthouse
Artist Presentations
Sunday, April 23, 10:00 am - 3:30 pm
Student Workshop + Plenary Discussion


30/03/2009�� You already answered your question. Stop being loud, stop being extremely assertive. Tone it down. Maybe you like being intimidating? Try finding others who �... 7/01/2019�� Pick and choose your battles, and don't get in the habit of being mean and intimidating toward too many people or your new personality just might stick. Make sure to watch yourself. If it feels a little too good to be mean and intimidating, then it's time to back off.
While there are things that make your boss turn on you, there are also things that they look at in a favorable light. Gather intel on what that is and then use it to influence their behavior.
Examine your interactions and ask yourself if you have a subconscious desire to manipulate others. Unresolved feelings of insecurity might manifest as a desire to bully or control. Increasing your self-confidence may help you interact in a more positive way.


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Q: jquery ajaxSubmit: how to optionally load response page I have a form that elicits various responses; it expects a certain format of response (and will get it under normal conditions), but if the server gets an error or otherwise redirects, I need to handle the page that gets returned by replacing the DOM with that page. In other words, I EITHER want to act like a normal form submission (which replaces the page) or get my special data.
The key, of course, is jQuery's ajaxSubmit, which gets the result of a form WITHOUT loading the page. So, having interrupted the normal forms processing and gotten this error page in hand, how do I then have it take over the browser?
At the level of the $.submit function I can return true to prevent normal handling. How can ajaxSubmit's success function "resume" it?

A: If you submit with Ajax, you can't then "re-activate" the non-Ajax form processing. What you can do is, if you are getting an entire page back through the Ajax call and you want to replace the page with that page, is use Javascript and DOM to replace the entire page. If for instance your returned content has a body tag in it, you can replace the current body tag with the new one. This is not exactly the same as forwarding the browser to the new page but it has the same effect.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Putin says 'we have not gone mad' in new threat to West
President Putin insisted yesterday that he had not lost his mind as he warned of the growing threat of nuclear war and accused Poland of seeking to seize western Ukraine.
In televised remarks Putin said that he and other senior Russian officials understood very well the power of nuclear weapons. "We have not gone mad," he said, adding that Moscow would deploy its nuclear arsenal, the largest in the world, only in the event of a nuclear attack on Russia. He warned, however, that the Kremlin would defend its territory and its allies with "all available means".
Putin vowed in September that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend four Ukrainian regions that it claims as its own. He later appeared to backtrack on the comments, however.
In often rambling comments to the Kremlin's Human Rights Council, Putin also claimed "nationalist groups" in Poland were plotting to annex areas of western Ukraine. Putin and other Russian officials have voiced similar allegations in recent weeks but Moscow has not provided evidence to back up its accusation.
Putin gave no indication that Russia intends to wind down its invasion. "As for the duration of the special military operation, well, of course, this can be a lengthy process," Putin said. He added that he saw "no sense", however, in a new round of mobilisation. He said that of 300,000 reservists called up after the Kremlin announced a nationwide draft in September, 77,000 "defenders of the fatherland" were now involved in combat operations.
Putin's comments came as Time magazine named President Zelensky and the spirit of Ukraine as "person of the year". In Washington, there were efforts to avert an escalation in the almost ten-month conflict after suspected Ukrainian drone strikes hit military facilities deep inside Russia.
Two long-range bombers were damaged this week by suspected Ukrainian drones, including an attack on the Engels airfield near Saratov, almost 400 miles inside Russia. Explosions also tore through military facilities in Ryazan, about 120 miles south of Moscow, and Kursk, 60 miles from the Ukrainian border. Russia has used the airfields to launch bombing raids on Ukraine. The United States said it had nothing to do with the attacks. "We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia," Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said. He did not criticise the strikes.
The British defence ministry said the Kremlin would be likely to consider the attacks among Russia's "most strategically significant failures" since the start of the war.
At least 32 people dead and 147 wounded in suspected suicide bomb attack in north-western Pakistan


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Eternal Romance
ETER (Best Destiny, 1997-1998)
™ and ©1997 Janet L. Hetherington
Janet Hetherington takes the starry-eyed romance comics of the fifties and gives them a unique twist. The protagonists in comics like Bride's Secrets and Young Romance used to wonder how to find the love of their lives. Here, the young lovers must worry about making love last for all eternity. Literally.
Yes, Eternal Romance is all about vampires in love. Told in the fluttering-heart style of the past, it mixes in the unique problems that come with perpetual night jobs, aging at different rates from your mortal husband, and knowing when it's ok to "take the plunge" and become a vampire yourself. It's at once nostalgic and a refreshingly unique comic, with none of the horror and/or bad-girl clichés that characterize modern "vampire girl" comics.
Jump to issue: 1 2 3 4 Bk 1
NM Guide: $1.10
2 copies available from $1.10 B&W Janet L. Hetherington Janet L. Hetherington
2 copies available from $0.99 Janet L. Hetherington Janet L. Hetherington
1 copy available for $2.25 Janet L. Hetherington Janet L. Hetherington
1 copy available for $9.00 Eternally Yours; Introduction by Batton Lash; B&W; ca. 2000 Janet L. Hetherington Janet L. Hetherington